A gallery dedicated to Victor Pasmore, who made his home here and bequeathed an invaluable artistic legacy to Malta, is open at the Central Bank of Malta.

[attach id=392433 size="medium"]Untitled by Victor Pasmore.[/attach]

Malta may be a little island but it has many a time been blessed by visitors of note and genius.

In art historical terms, Malta has benefitted from the presence of several great artists – Caravaggio, Preti, Filippo Paladini, and Antoine Favray who were connected to the Hospitaller Knights of the Order of St John. Among the British artists who worked on Malta, there were Charles Allingham, Edward Lear and, more recently, Julian Trevelyan, Mary Fedden an Victor Pasmore (1908-1998).

Pasmore chose Malta as his holiday home, but it soon became his and his wife’s permanent place of residence.

Their Gudja house is Pasmore’s legacy and is still home to his wife and family.

Malta has, in fact, maintained strong links with the Pasmore family. In 2012, the Pasmore family donated two works to the National Museum of Fine Arts in Valletta, and it continues to believe in the need of maintaining a link between Pasmore and Malta.

For this reason, the Pasmore Foundation reached an agreement with the Central Bank of Malta for a gallery dedicated entirely to Pasmore to be set up. This has finally come to fruition. The Central Bank holds four works by Pasmore in its collection, and it is now strengthening its association with the artist.

The chosen location for the Pasmore Gallery is the polverista, or gunpowder magazine, that was built in 1640 as part of Valletta’s fortifications, and remodelled in 1859. In more recent times, it was restored as part of a Central Bank of Malta initiative to be used as a conference hall. The build-ing, therefore, too has its intrinsic architectural and historical interest.

Pasmore’s contribution to the Maltese artistic scene can, with-out exaggeration, be compared to that by Caravaggio and Preti, as Richard England emphasised when the gallery was first presented to the press.

Pasmore’s contribution to Malta can be compared to that by Caravaggio and Preti

So why Pasmore? For those who do not know much about the life and work of this great British artist, Pasmore pioneered the development of abstract art in the UK in the 1940s and 1950s. His work hangs in major museums, such as the Tate Modern in London, London Royal Academy of Arts, the British Council and the Yale Centre for British Art, and the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) in New York.

Pasmore is, in fact, a trustee of the Tate Gallery and held a retrospective exhibition there in 1965. He also found the support of Kenneth Clark, the renowned and influential British art historian.

Pasmore achieved international fame by 1960 when he represented Britain at the Venice Biennale with a retrospective exhibition which later travelled throughout Europe.

His work as an abstract artist began in 1947 and since then, his minimalist art has mystified many. In his work, every inch of a work has significance, where only the most essential elements are maintained.

And why Malta? Luckily for us, and because of our rich heritage and knowledge of English, Pasmore and his artist wife, Wendy Blood, chose their holiday home in Gudja in 1966.

It became their permanent residence for over thirty years. His influence on Maltese art emerged through friendships he fostered with Maltese artists, among them Antoine Camilleri, Anton Agius, Gabriel Caruana, Josef Kalleya, Alfred Chircop and Richard England.

Pasmore also exhibited his work when in Malta in 1970 and 1975, at the Malta Society of Arts, Manufactures and Commerce and the National Museum of Fine Arts, respectively, reaching a broader audience. All of this had a conditioning effect on the development of modern art in Malta.

The polverista gallery that is entirely dedicated to Pasmore’s work will display several works from the artist’s personal collection at different intervals.

Victor Pasmore is an integral part of our artistic heritage. We must consider ourselves privileged to be endowed with such a gallery which is a fitting homage to a great master and a man who was seminal to changing the course of Maltese modern art.

The Victor Pasmore Gallery is open at the Polverista, Central Bank of Malta, on Tuesday, Thursday and Friday between 11am and 3pm.